The Provincial Food Company of Bayamo has begun distributing food modules for vulnerable individuals, with an allocation of rice, peas, and sugar that covers two months, according to a report on Thursday from the station Radio Bayamo.
Each beneficiary will receive 10 pounds of rice, two pounds of peas, and two pounds of sugar, explained Xiomara Lorenzo Ramírez, director of UEB 660 Mercado Paralelo, part of the Municipal Food Company.
The delivery began on Wednesday in the San Juan El Cristo area, known as La Doce, and extended this Friday to the El Horno neighborhood, which also serves beneficiaries from El Almirante.
The commercial units use the listings prepared by the Office of Control for Supply Distribution (Oficoda), prepare the offers, collect payment for the products, and deliver them directly to their recipients.
Local authorities announced that the program will be gradually extended to the municipalities and popular councils of Granma. The distribution is part of the targeted social protection model approved by the National Assembly in June, within the package of 176 economic and social transformations that replaced universal subsidies with targeted aid for individuals classified as vulnerable.
At the beginning of October, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz announced that more than 883,000 people would receive monthly five pounds of rice, one of sugar, and one of beans until January 2027. The official attributed the selection of beneficiaries to a "meticulous effort at the community level, door to door."
The Bayamo module contains double those amounts because it covers two months of allocation, not because it represents an increase in the monthly ration. The difference is significant in a country where access to food increasingly depends on limited state aid and the ability of households to purchase products at market prices.
On a national scale, the government selected 1,913 stores to distribute the modules, approximately 16% of a network that exceeds 12,000 establishments. Coverage is thus concentrated in a portion of the state commercial infrastructure and among the individuals included in official records.
The figures released by the authorities indicate a sustained increase in the population considered vulnerable. The number rose from 310,000 people in July 2025 to over 883,000 officially recognized at this time.
In Santiago de Cuba, authorities acknowledged that about 101,359 people, more than 10% of the provincial population, are in that situation. In Holguín, the proportion also reaches one in ten inhabitants.
The system has also raised questions regarding the criteria used to select beneficiaries. In Santiago de Cuba, there have been reports of individuals being excluded from the lists due to having relatives living abroad, a condition that, according to available information, does not appear in any regulations published in the Gaceta Oficial.
The economist Pedro Monreal warned that extending coverage to all individuals officially recognized as vulnerable would require increasing the current social protection spending by 4.5 times, totaling around 24.3 billion pesos, an amount that the Government does not have the capacity to finance.
For its part, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated, based on more than 1,300 interviews across 79 municipalities, that 94% of the Cuban population lives in extreme poverty.
This figure contrasts with the limited scope of the modules and the 3,210 pesos and 4,000 pesos per month that report a minimum salary and pension, respectively, equivalent to less than five dollars at the informal exchange rate.
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